Pinglu County is located at the foot of Zhongtiao Mountain in the southeast of China's northern Shanxi Province. The mountain is the southern gate of the province. Although the county is small and mountainous, it is a corner blessed by God, with abundant testimonies.
During the Qingming Holiday, the two of us went all the way to Pinglu Church for an exclusive report.
When I first met Elder Xu Zhanguo, the head of the church, the first impression she gave me was that of a short and thin woman who was humble and simple, capable and persistent.
Elder Xu was a farmer who worked at home. She believed in the Lord in 1987 when she was eagerly seeking a "God of Justice" who upholds justice. When her neighbor first introduced her to the Lord, she mentioned that she would believe as long as there was justice. Unexpectedly, on just the next day, a fat pig she raised called out for food, so she brought dish-washing water to feed the pig; but the pig was soon dying and instead lay down. After a veterinarian examined it, he was surprised to find that the internal organs of the pig had stinking and rotten. It was so weird that the pig still called out for food. Then, a neighbor who was a Christian heard the news and helped her find the local deacon Zhao to pray for her. Not knowing what praying was, she imitated the deacon to pray for the first time in her life.
After the prayer, the deacon said that the pig should be entrusted to God to see how God might act. Although the pig was not saved, Xu found that there was a God faintly accompanying her, so she strengthened her faith and believed in the Lord no matter what.
After that, Xu, who was still not clear about the doctrine of Christianity, started to attend various churches’ services in the surrounding villages with faith and fellow believers.
"I would go wherever the church is no matter how far that could be", said the elder. Elder Xu became the seventh Christian in her hometown, Sanmen Town, Pinglu County, at that time. Because she had previously been working on home farming, her education level was not high, so she made many ridiculous jokes in the early days of her faith journey.
When she first listened to a sermon, she heard the pastor say "believers are sheep". She took it literally and truly believed that she would become a real lamb after listening to more Bible teachings. She was worried for a while until when she heard the words that "the Lord is a good shepherd and the believers are sheep. God will guide the sheep to the green pastures beside the stream", she realized that she was the Lord's spiritual lamb.
In November 1987, Pinglu County Church offered a baptism training course. Elder Xu was overjoyed when she heard the news. She carried food on her back and walked more than ten miles to the county to sign up for baptism. Unexpectedly, the brothers in charge of believer registration in the church thought she was unfit for baptism because they saw that she was skinny. So they found an excuse to make her return.
Elder Xu, who hit a wall for the first time, could not hide her feelings of forfeit and cried all the way home. In March of the following year, the county held a baptism training class again, and Xu once more went there and was rejected as usual.
After this repeated itself three times, her enthusiasm and confidence finally touched the church staff in charge. A church standing committee member said, "This woman has faith. She has come three times, so give her a place." As such, she attended the training and was smoothly baptized. On the day of baptism, she shed tears.
After the official baptism, a passionate Elder Xu returned to the village and found that although there were many believers in the countryside, there were no pastors. She decided to lead church services by herself.
During the services, she who knew little how to conduct them just read aloud some articles which were found on magazines called Tianfeng or the Heavenly Wind, the magazine of TSPM church in China, and Jiaocai, a brochure compiled by the Jinling Union Theological Seminary for local Chinese churches. She could not read much of the Bible either. She had even pronounced the name Jesus as "ear fish" ("Er Yu" in Chinese, but should be "Ye Su"). She was a laughing stock for a while.
Although there was no regular ministering, Elder Xu still insisted on serving and never stopped for a week. Later, some pastors advised her, "God's words are the truth, which cannot be added to, reduced or read wrong." She realized the importance of education in spiritual growth and pastoral care.
At that time, Elder Xu's family was so poor that she could not afford to buy a dictionary at a price of 4.5 yuan. She prayed to God to give her wisdom and help her read. It was not till her eldest son went to school that the family finally got the first dictionary. She always first read the Bible before looking up the words in the dictionary. At that time, the Bible was still printed in traditional Chinese characters. With the help of God, she got to know many words and rarely made mistakes.
Then there were 14 Christians in her village, and her home became a gathering point. With the concerted efforts of other workers, 93 people in the village believed in the Lord. Then the number of believers increased. Three gathering points were set up in the village. By 2005, there were more than 400 churchgoers in the village.
At the beginning of her ministry, her family was quite critical. Her husband did not understand her faith at first and some contradictions also occurred to her. Once, when she went to serve in another village, her husband chased her to the station at the entrance of the village. Besides the bus, he tore up her hymns and Bible. Elder Xu said to her husband, "Tear it up. There are plenty of copies in the church study room. I'll buy a new one if you tear it up. Tear it up if you have money. You can block me but not my love for the Lord." After this incident, her husband also saw her faith and stopped interfering with her ministry. In 2001, under the influence of Elder Xu, her husband finally converted to Christianity.
Later, her husband suffered from cerebral infarction, which affected his speech and communication. Her husband had two bottom lines: first, no one should say that believing in Jesus is bad; second, no one should say that his wife, Elder Xu, is not good. In 2005 when her husband died, she was sad, but looking back, there was also God's pleasant purpose in it.
"God trained me in this way in order to make me an instrument suitable for God's use", she confessed.
After her husband died, Elder Xu came to serve in Pinglu County Church. What she did not expect were the many struggles inside the church.
She found that the former elders in charge used to misappropriate financial donations, which made many members angry but afraid to speak out. There were only six old rooms which could only accommodate over 300 believers for gatherings while there were more than 1,000 Christians in the county. There was no choice but to build a shed outside to barely accommodate believers. Some disabled and elderly believers in wheelchairs could only sit outside.
Elder Xu, who could not bear to see the believers suffer, immediately ordered the church accountant to tell the cashier that there should be no more corruption and embezzlement. This caused dissatisfaction among some management staff in the church and also laid a hidden danger for the follow-up work.
In 2007, the Pinglu Church held a general election, and Elder Xu was officially elected as the responsible person. The believers also supported her work and made contributions to the church. Although the believers were very enthusiastic, splits gradually appeared in the church at that time. Some management staff disturbed the order of the gathering several times and even privately hired outsiders from unknown sources to teach in the church, which aroused negative influences in the local area.
Affected by this incident, Xu also received many unwarranted criticisms from inside and outside the church. Under a lot of pressure, she once thought of quitting. In constant prayers and meditations, Elder Xu deeply felt that the existence of all this chaos was closely related to many drawbacks in the traditional management of the church.
With the number of believers increasing in Pinglu County, the old church could not meet the needs of normal services, so the construction of a new Pinglu church was officially put on the agenda. And the process of building the church was accompanied by miracles, disputes, and blood and sweat. At the beginning of the church site selection work, without the assistance of suitable staff, she had to go around by herself, find the land designated by the Urban Construction Planning Bureau, and consulted with the village for the allocation of land.
At that time, the first agreed payment was 100,000 yuan. The church had no money, so she had to pay out of her own pocket. Xu and her son gave more than 20,000 yuan. When the site selection was completed, the problem of designing architectural drawings followed. She kept praying to God for wisdom. By God's grace, she painted the houses and structures needed by God's family on the ground while watching the scene with the engineers of the designing institute.
The preliminary work was initially completed, but as soon as the two associations met to discuss the project, different opinions emerged one after another. The debate turned into a fierce quarrel at one time and the work of building the church was once stagnant. After that, the church found a suitable construction company in Yuncheng. After a collective investigation, on June 18, 2013, the building of the church officially started.
With the foundation and the steel bars laid, Xu started a year and seven months' paperwork procedures. For more than a year, she went to various departments every day, usually handling five or six documents a day, or for signing by multiple departments. In desperation, Elder Xu had to wait outside the relevant government units early in the morning and returned to the construction site at noon to coordinate the construction and other issues. Running around all day, Elders Xu did not have time to eat anything but snacks. Also, during this period, she suffered from stomach ulcers, esophageal reflux, and other diseases due to long-term fatigue. Fortunately, after all the hardships, all the qualification procedures for building the church were successfully completed.
Building a church requires constant financial support. In her sermon, Elder Xu advised all believers, "The blessings that Pinglu people deserve can't flow out (can't get lost). With donations, our church will be built and future generations will be blessed." Believers actively gave donations after hearing this. She also organized a sermon group composed of five people, who went deep into various meeting places to preach and encourage believers to give. In addition, Elder Xu also arranged for a sacred drama based on the story of the entire people's dedication towards the building of the Great Temple in the Bible, which caused a sensation after the performance, and received hundreds of thousands of yuan of dedication before and after the performance.
Later, Elder Xu went to Wenzhou to carry out the "fund-raising" work under the recommendation of a sister in Wenzhou who had set up a factory in Pinglu. Despite some setbacks, sufficient funds were raised to build the church. After the completion of the church, the balance was over 310,000 yuan.
Mentioning the miracle that impressed Elder Xu the most during the building of the church is also a wonderful experience in the process of installing the cross on the roof of the church. During the installation of the cross (weighing 3.9 tons) on the top of the seventh floor, from early morning to night, more than 100 believers of Pinglu Church gathered together to praise and pray. On the same day, the crane had to transport the 9.5-meter-high cross to the roof in sections, each section was 3 meters, and the final size was not high enough, which made it difficult to align the bolt holes. Considering that the crane cost 6500 yuan a day, it was getting dark and windy again. Xu stood on the roof wearing a hard hat. She cried out to God, "God, people can't help it. You are omnipotent. There is nothing difficult for you!" After praying, the cross-frame was smoothly installed. The workers at the scene said in unison, "There is God!" It is said that some workers later believed in Jesus.
In addition, during the construction of the main church, a non-believer project leader visited the site several times to check the construction progress. Later, the person in charge took the initiative to ask the church if he could help build the church. It turned out that this man was the boss of a concrete mixing business. By God's grace, he was touched many times when he saw Elder Xu working hard to build a church alone in government units. Thanks to this brother's dedication, all hardening materials were supplied for the roof and basement of the church. Not only that, but a local sister also donated bricks worth 160,000 yuan to build the church.
Eventually came the day when the church was completed and presented. On September 14, 2015, the principal responsible staffs from 13 counties and cities in Yuncheng, and Sanmenxia Church in Henan Province, came to Pinglu to celebrate; each parish was allocated three days to celebrate the event. A total of 30,000 people came to celebrate the day of the church, and believers in the county also donated 16 sheep and three and a half pigs. There were 10 chefs in the cooking service.
In the new election, Elder Xu adopted the method of "sea election" in each parish to recommend candidates. Now, candidates are not to be designated and the believers vote for the leadership team step by step. Serving staffs should be elected on the basis of leading a good spiritual life and be supported by the believers as a leader.
In daily management, Pinglu Church adopted standardized and democratic management with 57 grassroots gathering points and urban main church systems unified, and unified financing and accounting.
Financial personnel are trained once a year. They are randomly selected once every two years and surveyed once every three years. The accounts are settled daily and monthly. The donation boxes are to be unpacked by three people and the donated figures will be publicized once every six months. The county church accounts are audited by the Audit Bureau once a year. The church’s promise is: anyone can check accounts at any time.
There are currently three theological students serving in Pinglu Church and two of them are still studying. In addition, the church holds a regular meeting once a month, insists on holding special training for pastors every year, and invites other pastors to give lectures. More than 400 volunteer pastors have been trained for three years. At the same time, Xu compiled the pamphlets of 'A Pastor's View of the Church' and 'Pastor and Management', and gave lectures in person.
At present, the main hall on the second and third floors of Pinglu Church can accommodate 2,000 believers to worship at the same time, and the auxiliary hall can accommodate more than 100 people. On the eve of the pandemic, every Sunday was full. Elder Xu said with relief, "According to God's will, this is far from enough."
The church has donated more than 100,000 yuan for earthquake-stricken areas, mudslides, tsunamis, flood fighting and disaster relief, and has carried out activities to visit and sympathize with the disabled and the elderly every year. In addition, in Donghanyao Village, where Pinglu Church is located, on every Double Nine Festival (September 9), the church will donate two pairs of socks, a box of dairy products and fruits to each person over 70 years old, and also donate 32,000 yuan for road repair in the village.
During the pandemic in 2020, the church donated more than 400,000 yuan. Masks and protective clothing were bought for duty personnel stationed in the front line of pandemic prevention. Five electric vehicles were donated for community workers.
After many years of church service, Elder Xu has never received a salary. Sometimes she needs to go to the mortuary to pray and dress-up the dead at two o'clock in the middle of the night. Yet, she is also subjected to many slanders and attacks. However, she never regrets her choice that she only shows commitment to glorify God.
- Translated by Charlie Li
